Université de Fribourg

Host starvation decreases parasite load and mean host size in experimental populations

Pulkkinen, Katja ; Ebert, Dieter

In: Ecology, 2004, vol. 85, p. 823-833

While host stress in vertebrate populations has often been linked to outbreaks of epidemics, which are attributed to the immuno-compromise of the stressed hosts, no predictions have been made about the response of invertebrate host populations to stressful conditions. Experiments conducted on individual invertebrate hosts, however, suggest that starved hosts may be a poor resource for...